THE HURON RACE AND ITS HEAD-FORM. 127 



and, though discovered in the country of the Hurons, is more probably 

 the relic of one who found a grave there, remote from those of his ovfn 

 people. In so far as fashion regulated the varying forms produced by 

 compression in infancy, its shape suggests a possible intruder from the 

 country lying towards the mouth of the Mississippi, where the ancient 

 graves of the Natchez tribes disclose many skulls n?oulded into approx- 

 imate forms. No note has been preserved of the general character of 

 the crania, upwards of two hundred in number, discovered at the same 

 time ; but this one no doubt owes its selection to its peculiar form. 



This is an element of '' natural selection" which must materially 

 affect the value of such collections of crania as that of Dr. Morton, for 

 determining ethnical characteristics. In every case of the exposure of 

 a considerable number of skulls, as in the opening of a large ossuary, 

 the ordinary collector will naturally choose the largest, and in the case 

 of any remarkable abnormal varieties, the most striking and unfamiliar 

 forms. Where the choice lies between only three or four examples, the 

 same process of selection will still operate ; and thus results derived 

 even from so numerous a collection as that of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences at Philadelphia, — including in all upwards of a thousand 

 skulls, — may prove greatly to exceed the normal average, or even to 

 rest at times on purely exceptional evidence. 



I have referred to the contrast in vertical elevation of the Barrie 

 skull, when compared with that from the Scioto Valley mound. But 

 it is in the remarkable developement of the frontal bone that that cele- 

 brated cranium differs most strikingly from all of the common Indian 

 type. It has been lithographed of its full size in Messrs. Squire & 

 Davis's " Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," but unfortu- 

 nately with more care on the part of the draftsman for artistic execu- 

 tion than accuracy of outline. A careful examination of the original 

 considerably modifies the impression suggested by the drawing.* On 

 viewing it from above, as shown in Fig. 1, it presents the peculiar 

 characteristics of the truncated skull-form in its most marked aspect, 

 passing abruptly from a broad flattened occiput to the extreme parietal 

 breadth, immediately behind the external angular process of the frontal 

 bone. So far, as will be seen from the outlines of the two, it does not 

 greatly differ from the Barrie skull, Fig. 2. But its most character- 



* A wood-cut of the Scioto Mound Skull in tlie same aspect as the full-sized lithograpliic 

 view in the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," hut executed for me from a photo- 

 graph of the original skull, has been already given. Ante Vol. xiv, p. 276. 



